


The King of Loneliness

by Shadsie



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Asexual Romance, Canon Divergence, Cuteness before the tragedy, Cyborgs, Darkfic, Darkness, Dimensional Gates, Drama, Evil Overlord and Mad Scientist dynamic, F/M, Fluff, For Science!, Lab Partners, Mad Scientists, Planetary Conquest, Robots, Science Fiction, Tragedy, fluff and darkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-02-27 08:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18735658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie
Summary: Choices made in one of Entrapta's many ethical dilemmas yields unexpected results.  She had only expected to use the Horde for her own ends in regards to making advancements in science.  She did not expect to gain a standing in the court of the overlord who ruled her new home with an iron fist.  The more she got to know him, the more she found everything about Hordak fascinating.Hordak, for his part of it, never expected a magically-endowed "little princess" of a backwater planet to be so knowledgeable and open-minded.  In fact, she knew more than he did about many things, though he wasn't open to admitting it.The journey of two people who find that they need one another in unexpected ways.





	1. Ethical Dilemmas

**Author's Note:**

> Based on Seasons 1 and 2 of "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power." Will contain sci-fi and worldbuilding headcanons / plot-wrangling that I expect will likely be debunked in later seasons. Planning a cuteness-burn to end in despair. You have been warned. Definitely planning to be off-canon / I will be upset if canon goes the direction I'm planning this story to go in. Merely a speculative fiction on the way things could go if the She-Ra series was darker. Hey, it's a Shadsie-fic, what do you expect?

**The King of Loneliness**  
  
  
_“I’ll keep on making those new mistakes_  
_I’ll keep on making them every day_  
 _Those new mistakes” _ Try Everything, Shakira for the film “Zootopia”_

**Chapter 1: Ethical Dilemmas**  
  
  
“Sixty-three? Has it really been that many already?”   
  
Entrapta was going over her record of recent ethical dilemmas.  The “dubious moral choice” she’d made on the last one had worked out surprisingly in her favor.  It was one of those that she’d decided “It wasn’t a crime if you didn’t get caught” on – except that she had been caught, but it had worked out for the best.   
  
She rewound the record to some months ago and listened to the first conundrum she’d had since the turn of the year.  Her own voice played back at her.  “I have just signed a weapons-production contract and gotten Dryl involved in a war.”   
  
That contract had been for the Rebellion.  Dryl had stayed out of the war since it had begun and Entrapta found herself unexpectedly recruited to a side of it within the space of a stormy day.  She’d had to do something in return for having her life and the lives of her personal staff saved from an experiment gone wrong.  Recruitment was what her saviors had wanted, and they were particularly interested in any applied science she could give them – despite the failed experiment they’d all just survived.  It was a quick decision, but it had made sense at the time.   
  
She fast-forwarded to “Fright Zone Log: Day 3, Hour 12: Have begun assessment on drone-systems for the Horde under Catra’s orders…”  Now she was improving and making weapons for the Horde, and had been for some time.      
  
She mulled it over in her head, the apparent defection.  As she had told Bow in a brief communiqué a few days ago, she was not “on any side,” just “on the side of science.”  The Horde had better equipment to work with and presented greater opportunities for learning and growth in her skills.  They offered much more potential for getting her hot little hands on First Ones tech.  She had chosen to remain in the Fright Zone as a matter of engaging in discovery and progress.  In her eyes, any pursuit of science would come back around to help the world as a whole one day, even if it didn’t do so immediately and even if sacrifices had to be made.   
  
The more Entrapta thought about it, the more she realized that she did not care about the ideology of this war on either side.  War was inherently illogical, and weapons were inherently destructive.  Did it really matter which “side” used the weapons?  The Horde used their drones and tanks to destroy, suppress and subjugate.  The Rebellion used magic, swords and arrows to do the same right back.  

She’d studied a wound that Rogelio had received on a scouting mission after the squadron he was in had encountered some Rebels.  Kyle was quick to bind it up and to offer him words of comfort. This had disappointed Entrapta, who wanted to use the opportunity the wound provided to do a little study on the anatomy of lizard-men, but it had bled a great deal and Rogelio hadn’t been cooperative in letting her prod it. In fact, she’d narrowly avoided being bitten.  The wounding and after-action patch-up was usually the other way around with him and Kyle, with how often Kyle would get hurt in training scenarios, but this time, it was big, brawny Rogelio that had suffered.  Both of these young Hordesemen had been as kind to her as Bow and Glimmer had been (before they’d left her behind).  So again, did it really matter who she was building war-machines for?  Each side hurt the other.   
  
Science didn’t have any bias toward anything other than the truth.  It seemed like whatever side of a fight one was on, people were going to get hurt, and therefore being on the side of science felt the most at home.  There was such a thing as ethics in science, but, on the whole, it was straight and clean – not like politics.  And so, after mulling over her litany of ethical dilemmas, Entrapta decided that she could set politics aside to focus upon what she saw as a master-good.   
  
And if there were a few spectacular explosions along the way, surviving those would be fun.  Emily exploded a lot, but was getting smarter and more agile with each upgrade.   
  
Being naughty on Number Sixty-Three had yielded interesting results and an abundance of new opportunities.  Her quest for a six-sided hex driver and found her entering Hordak’s laboratory (his “sanctum” – she really liked that name for it).  Hordak had found her and was extremely rude at first.  She’d found some things to fix up, things that looked like they were jury-rigged that could use a proper re-wiring.   
  
Lord Hordak was impressed when it turned out she was right.  Upon discovering some written calculations she recognized the theories behind, the two of them got to talking.  _He not only spoke to her of theories she’d been investigating for a long time, apparently – HE HAD BEEN THERE!_    
  
This…this was a game-changer!   
  
No one knew where the First Ones had come from.  There were many ideas about them, ranging from the mundane to the religious.  Some people thought of them as ancient gods.  A few thought of them as ancient, planetary natives, simply the first civilization of sapient beings.  What most believed – and what most evidence pointed to – was that they were beings from another dimension, from somewhere beyond Etheria.  However, dimensional gates were nothing that anyone on Etheria had been able to create, at least in known history.  All that was known for sure was that the First Ones were technologically-advanced beyond anyone’s current understanding and that there had been some kind of “fall” in history to set people back.  Etherian civilization was something that was re-building and shaping itself anew over at least the last millennium after a mysterious sharp severing.   
  
Entrapta was keenly aware that her role was merely as a scavenger.  She was trying to build a puzzle with most of the pieces missing or warped.   
  
As for the Horde, everyone knew that they had come from somewhere beyond – but it was unclear where.  The Fright Zone had started off small, but, like a malignant tumor, had grown.  Entrapta loved it here – with all of the freedom given to her so far and all of the tools and technology in advance of most Etherian things, however, the Horde was clearly a scavenger-culture, too.  Entrapta could see it in how most things she encountered seemed to be quick-rigged and how the wiring of things like searchlights and electrical connections were inefficient. Not-surprising.  They hadn’t had contact with Dryl until recently and didn’t know how things were done there – like most of the kingdoms.  The Fright Zone was a far cry from the “off the grid” kingdom of Plumeria or the hard-bitten tundra-lands of the Kingdom of Snows, but there were plenty of things to fix.   
  
And here she was being told that dimensional gates _could_ be achieved and that worlds beyond the sky were real.  Hordak wasn’t just a bogyman from stories, a trumped-up figure from a misunderstood kingdom.  He was a bona fide alien.   
  
This could not have intrigued Entrapta more.   
  
Too boot, getting a closer look at him than she had before (boy did he like to sit around in the dark) she could see that his armor was not merely armor.  It was fitted into his body.  He was partially robotic – what was known in technical terms as a cyborg.   
  
The more she talked with him, the more she wanted to learn.  The way he spoke – it was on a level she’d never encountered and he listened to her.  She had such a tough time getting anyone to listen to her theories.  People simply didn’t ask her about them outright and when she tried to share them, more often than not people would tell her that she was boring them, that she was weird or they would start out interested and then zone out when she started getting to things beyond their grasp.  Even members of the Maker’s Guild would get lost when she’d tried to explain her First Ones technology-integration methods because she was apparently the only person on the planet that had developed the ability.   
  
So, here she had just discovered someone who knew things that she did not know and was easy to share them and who, in turn, hung upon her every word.   
  
She’d first entered the sanctum days ago and had come back for more.  Hordak had even invited her to sit down in his throne room now.  He seemed to understand that she didn’t particularly like having to look up at someone when talking to them (a consistent problem for her, since she was so short – and propping herself up on her hair sometimes elicited an irrational fear-reaction in a subject).  He solved the problem easily by simply sitting down upon his throne and letting her perch on an arm-rest.   
  
When he smiled at her, Entrapta could not help but notice his very interesting teeth.  Although there were some animals that had very yellow or even reddish teeth, she’d never seen an enamel-color quite that deep a red.  Fascinating. 

She could not quite figure out if Hordak’s eyes were natural to his kind or if they were among his cybernetic implants. She supposed he’d tell her in time.  Perhaps she could extort it from him in exchange for one of her integration-projects or fixing some of the Fright Zone’s security-computer coding.  They flashed yellow and red, it would seem, depending upon his mood and were always luminescent.  She _really_ wanted to know how they worked.    
  
He was polite to Emily, too.  It seemed like everyone in the Fright Zone rather liked her – unlike the other Princesses, which had seemed afraid of her.  It was understandable, since she’d started out life as a Horde battle-drone and therefore a thing meant to hurt them.  As of now, no one, not even Hordak, was upset that Emily was no longer fighting and had become Entrapta’s assistant and best friend.  Instead, when the subject of her came up, he seemed intrigued by her emergent behavior after Entrapta’s upgrades.   
  
Entrapta had gained much from her recent ethical dilemmas.  She did not know if she was getting her solutions to them “right” or “wrong” in the conventional sense, but she was now on the cusp of great things and had an interesting lab partner.  On some level, she understood why other people were afraid of Lord Hordak, being as tall as he was, pale and cloaked in darkness- but she was not.  He struck her as more interesting than terrifying.    
  
He warranted further study. Much further study.   
  
 


	2. Adapt and Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hordak knew the meaning of the term "Adapt or die."  
> He was barely surviving on Etheria.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains dubious worldbuilding ideas that I expect will probably be debunked in later seasons of the new She-Ra series (this story is being written off of Seasons 1-2, with little information of Season 3 in sight). If I happen to get some things accidentally right, I'll chalk it up to my strange fandom psychic powers. (I've accidentally predicted stuff with my "Legend of Zelda" fanfics before). The beauty of fanfiction is that you can build upon a world while taking things in your own direction.

**The King of Loneliness**  
  
  
_“It was the wicked and wild wind  
__Blew down the doors to let me in  
Shattered windows and the sound of drums  
__People couldn’t believe what I’d become_  
_Revolutionaries wait_  
 _For my head on a silver plate_  
 _Just a puppet on a lonely string_  
 _Oh, who would ever want to be king?” – Viva la Vida, Coldplay_   


**Chapter 2: Adapt and Change**  
  
  
In another life, he had been a top military leader: General Hec-Tor Kur.  “Hordak” was more of a title for him than a name – the title of an heir.  In certain terms, he could have been called a prince, but that was not how the Horde worked.  To stand before Horde Prime one had to earn their rank through strength in battle and by conquest.  Nothing came purely by birthright.   
  
Hec-Tor-Kur had not seen his original subordinates and pupils in a long time.  Revenge upon his rivals lay eons in the waiting, as were the true objects of his desired conquest – Although landing on Etheria had not come without benefits.  Etheria, after all, was one of _their_ worlds.     
  
One of the many things that the people native to this small planet floating in its pocket of isolated darkness did not know and could not have known was that, once upon a time, their mythic “First Ones” and the Horde were the same root-people.  They had originated from a single planet before a schism happened that resulted in what essentially amounted to an eternal war.  The First Ones had grown in technological advancement to a point at which they had failed to balance their lives against their home world’s nature.  All was not lost for them, however, as they’d learned to adapt and change.   
  
This, too, had come through technology.  Survivors of the various cataclysms modified their bodies and those of their descendants into forms that could withstand chemicals in the water, soil and air that was once toxic to their kind.  As such, they were no longer entirely organic.  They had become stronger, more resilient.  They could not only survive on their inexorably-altered world, but upon many planets that would have been inaccessible to their predecessors. They could even withstand the vacuum of the Void. What was once a crisis had become a boon to them:  The need to alter their functions had made them unstoppable – equipped to explore and spread across the universe.   
  
However, there were some among the originating people who were not content to live with their newfound strength.  They wished to re-create what had been lost.  They’d considered it remorse and atonement for sins against their home.  They terraformed small, rocky planets and even built a few from scratch in the vastness of space, seeding them with the remains of fully-organic life.  They worked to try to re-build plants, animals and even the origin-people – unaltered and dependent upon the atmosphere, the soil, the water, and the entire life-web.  They created half-beast races, too, in the hopes that they would do well in the constructed environments.  They created power-connections between their terraforming program-nodes and mechanical guardians to keep their constructed planets in working-order.   
  
This was how the split happened:  The beings that gave rise to the so-called “First Ones” were a splinter-group, a nostalgic people who would not let go of the past.  They were reverse-engineering their progeny into weakness.  They had rejected adaptation for regression.   
  
Those that chose to embrace the changes that had made their people more versatile were branded “The Horde” and like a horde of locusts, they gobbled up any world they came across, making it theirs.  They had no need for delicate worlds that fell within the parameters of their home planet’s former limits.  The Horde took it upon themselves to take the planets of the enemy as well as the open-worlds.  It was simply a matter of opposite-philosophy.   
  
Let go.  Adapt or die.   
  
Hordak sometimes wondered if the war had ever ended.  He had no way of telling events beyond the sky – trapped here in this cage of a dimension.  He was certain that the war continued, as it had been going on since before he existed.  War never changed – only the details did.  As it was, the world he was stuck on was one of the enemy’s pet projects and thus, it was his duty to take it.  He would claim what he could of its power and its organic-beings for the use of his people.  Also, as it was, conquest ensured their survival.   
  
His fleet-crew, their descendants and the servant-races born of their genetic-engineering projects were not thriving here.  Hordak was reminded of his own slow decay every day.   
  
______________________________________________________

 

  
  
“Ooh, what’s this?”  
  
“What are you doing? Get away from that!”   
  
Hordak roared orders at his new lab-assistant to no avail.  Entrapta was inspecting an area of his sanctum that was strictly off-limits.  She edged her masked face close to his maintenance-equipment, prodding one of the arms with a thin pick-tool brandished in a coil of her hair.  It jumped to life and almost impaled her.  She bounded back, narrowly avoiding injury.   
  
“Oxidation,” she declared, “in other words, rust.  A lot of these joints are rusted.  When was the last time you replaced the components?  Or cleaned them?”   
  
Hordak was ready to grab her by her hair and throw her across the room.  Although he wore a face of anger, inwardly, he was assaulted by existential fear.  Entrapta was poking around the cybernetics portion of his lab – the area that he used every day to upkeep his body.  If she broke any of it, he could be condemned to a slow death.   
  
“I do not think you understand, Little Princess,” he growled.  “Step away from that.”   
  
“Hey, I got this.  Just a sec!”   
  
She promptly pulled a tiny welding-tool out from the inside of one of her massive pony tails.  “Just a little re-wire here,” she muttered as she quickly worked.  “There, all done!  Well, this arm.  It’ll take me some time to assess the rest.”   
  
The machine-arm flexed back and forth.  It moved fluidly and no longer emitted sparks.   
  
“What is all of this, anyway?” Entrapta asked.   
  
“It is not something you would understand,” Hordak said.   
  
“Why wouldn’t I understand it?  Yaah?!”   
  
She yelped sharply as he grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back.  The various equipment-arms had sprung to life at once as she’d stepped onto the sensor pad on the floor.  The pad, of course, had sensed the presence of a body there and set the maintenance-machine to full-work.  While this was a morning and evening ritual for Hordak, Entrapta would have had her fragile flesh beaten, gouged and drilled had she stood there a second longer.   
  
Emily beeped her concern, catching and steadying Entrapta against her massive round chassis.  Entrapta’s confused and betrayed gaze met Hordak’s narrow-eyed red one.   
  
“What was that for?” she demanded.   
  
“This area is a hazard for your kind,” Hordak said with strange, seething calm.  The machine-arms approached him and he held up his hand in command.  They immediately retreated and lowered.  “At present, you are not expendable.”   
  
“Not expendable. Hmmm,” Entrapta held up an index finger.  “Well, that’s a relief. We are lab partners.  That wouldn’t exactly work if one of us was expendable.”   
  
Hordak gently caressed the equipment arm that Entrapta had just fixed.  He inspected it carefully.  He turned to the princess.   
  
“Do you think you can repair the rest of this?”   
  
“I could try.  As long as the stuff isn’t going to stab me while I’m working.” 

Hordak stepped over to a lever on the floor and pushed it.  There was a sharp powering-down sound as the robotic arms remained in their stasis-positions in the maintenance-chamber.  He stepped aside and gestured with one hand.  He wondered, for a moment, about the amount of trust he was putting in his new subordinate.  She had not been in the Fright Zone for long and she was one of the world’s Princesses – a descendant of protectors that his ancient enemies had charged with the keeping of their pathetic project-planet.  Then again, Entrapta did not seem to be aware of her true legacy or its power.  She was not unlike one of his Force Captains – a Princess of Scorpion Hill.  For now, at least, Entrapta seemed to only care about research and discovery, technology and science and was eager to fix anything simply for the joy of utilizing her hands, her hair and her brain.  She was proving useful and he was already beginning, however begrudgingly, to genuinely enjoy her presence.  She had the makings of a perfect servant – one who found pleasure in work for its own sake.   
  
Upon seeing that Hordak was welcoming her to tinker, Entrapta squeaked with joy, grabbed several tools off several tables at once with her hair and launched herself on the ends of her ponytails into the chamber.  She beckoned her modified robot to assist her.  Hordak stepped back to watch her, in part curious as to what she was going to try – how she was going to approach this, if she would be able to “read” and understand the workings of his equipment, and, of course, to make sure she did not show any signs of attempted sabotage.   
  
Although he felt like he could trust her, Hec-Tor-Kur did not become a general by bestowing complete trust to anybody.   
  
“Oh, hey, what have we got here?” Entrapta mused as she carefully inspected everything in the chamber.  “All of these – they look quite old and broken down…”   
  
“OLD AND BROKEN DOWN!” came a repeat of her voice behind Hordak.  He whipped around to find Imp sitting atop a pipe near the ceiling, staring at him and repeating a louder version of Entrapta’s voice back at him.   
  
“Stop that!” he growled.   
  
Imp shut his mouth and slinked off to the shadows.   
  
“What are these for, anyway?” Entrapta asked, humming.  “Some of the components look rather delicate.  Actually, it all looks a bit like an automated robot-building and repair system that I was trying to build back in my lab at Dryl – you know, something that would save me some time maintaining my house-bots while I did my First Ones tech-research.  I never could quite work out all of the bugs.  Some of the screwdrivers were…well…screwy.”   
  
“It is rather private.”   
  
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Entrapta exclaimed, “Some of this looks like medical equipment!  It looks like some First Ones tech one of my dig-teams found in a ruin once! I took it apart and found some things in it that looked like surgical tools used by the healers in Bright Moon.  Fascinating!”   
  
She turned to Hordak, making a comfortable seat for herself on her own hair.  “Were you experimenting with First Ones tech before I was?”  
  
“This is Horde technology,” Hordak said simply.   
  
“Very well,” Entrapta said, going back to her tinkering.  “Let me guess.  You must use this to maintain the cybernetic components of your body!  The signs are all here! These are all delicate and tiny tools!  The medical-components!” 

Hordak winced. He was the last person to want to reveal vulnerability.   
  
“Thank you for letting me work on this!” Entrapta chimed.  “It can’t be easy… I mean, if you need this…”  
  
“All I want to know is if you can repair it.”   
  
“Oh, yes, definitely!  Emily, pass me that blowtorch!” 


	3. Small Comforts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hordak notices that Entrapta has certain, very particular needs. 
> 
> He does his best to accommodate them.

**The King of Loneliness**  
  
  
_“I took a walk through this beautiful world  
_ _Felt the cool rain on my shoulder  
_ _Found something good in this beautiful world  
_ _I felt the rain getting colder.” _ Beautiful World (Opening theme to “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown”)_

**Chapter 3: Small Comforts**  
  
  
Hordak gnawed on a piece of meat.   It was raw and more than a bit bloody – a bit of horseflesh, which was easy enough to come by.   Few people in the Fright Zone knew that he ate anything at all.  Usually, he sipped on the standard nutrient-slurries that were given to the soldiers, but he did not have the sharp teeth of a carnivore for nothing.  Technically, he could eat almost anything, like a standard humanoid, but the sharp canine teeth he possessed were a part of the legacy of the ancient schism.  Protein from animal-sources could be much easier to come by on certain planets than plant and fungal sources. Most of the Horde veered toward carnivorous habits.  Meat was required for the crocodilian reptile-folk race in their employ.  It had also been found to be a requirement for their single native cat-folk soldier.  Some meat was always issued with the gruel.   
  
He was not looking forward to his evening dressing-down.  Despite Entrapta’s repairs, the equipment was getting janky again.  She’d complained that some of the rusting was irreparable and that there appeared to be parts missing – the kind she couldn’t manufacture unless he could tell her what, exactly, they were.  Even she had limits in regards to reverse-engineering.   
  
She had insisted upon inspecting his body to get a handle on his needs.  He had declined that – for now, although he wasn’t uncomfortable being without his full-armor with her working around the sanctum.  She was wholly focused upon their projects and had made no move of threat against him.  She had quickly become almost like a piece of furniture.  
  
Hordak’s gaze roved over a large screen with many calculations and notations upon it. On the bottom right-hand side was “1.21 giggawats-scribble-scrabble-line-off-the-screen.”  He looked down at his feet to a lavender-colored cocoon of hair.  A stylus was held in a stray curl.  Soft snores emanated from it from the giant hair-pile.     
  
“Entrapta,” Hordak said, gently prodding his lab partner with the toe of one boot.  
  
She responded with a sharp snort and a mumble as her hair coiled around her more tightly.  Hordak looked at the work-table beside the screen.  A pouch of nutrient-slurry remained untouched, resting upon it.   
  
“Entrapta,” he said with another nudge.  She did not respond.   
  
Hordak grumbled as he bent down.  How annoying! What indignity – him, kneeling! He reached out a hand and gripped what he guessed was Entrapta’s shoulder beneath the sea of purple, just past her drooling face.  
  
“Entrapta,” he said with a shake.  “Get up.”   
  
“Mwah?” the sleepy girl responded, waking up.  Hair loosed itself from her form as she sat up.   
  
“It is late.  You need to leave.”   
  
Entrapta got to her feet and looked at the board.  “I’ve fallen asleep in my lab before,” she said with a mighty yawn.  “Don’t worry about it.  At least I didn’t sleep on a screwdriver this time. Waking up to that hurts!”   
  
Hordak stood tall before her, imposing.  “You may return in the morning.”   
  
“Do I have to?” Entrapta groaned.  “I’m this close to a breakthrough-”  
  
“I will not have you compromised.  If your mind is foggy, your numbers will be foggy, as well.”   
  
He wandered to a communication device.  “Force Captain Catra! Come to my sanctum at once!”   
  
“I’m fine, really!” Entrapta protested.   
  
A door slid open and Catra appeared in the doorway.  She casually scratched her rear as her tail twitched.  Her face held a mixture of emotions:  Just-awakened / nearly asleep, an angry glare, and the customary respect and fear it always held in Hordak’s presence.   
  
Without turning to face her, Hordak handed down his orders.  “Take Entrapta to her quarters and make sure she gets into a proper bed.”   
  
“Why isn’t she in bed? It’s nearly dawn…”   
  
“See that it gets done.”   
  
Catra sighed.  “Come on.”  She sidled up next to Entrapta and let her lean against her in a stagger.  Emily popped to life from the shadows and followed.  “Looks like I’m not done playing babysitter,” she complained.   
  
“More…work to do…” Entrapta groaned, head dipping, nearly falling asleep on her feet as Catra guided her along.   
  
“You may return when I call you,” Hordak intoned.  “Goodnight.”   
  
The door slammed shut behind Entrapta and Catra as they exited. 

  
  
______________________________________________________________  
  
  
  
“Force Captain Scorpia… it has come to my attention lately that Princess Entrapta is not eating properly.”   
  
Scorpia stood straight and tall before Hordak, holding up a claw in a salute.  “Lord Hordak, well, there’s some complication in that.”   
  
“What kind of complication?” he demanded, eyes flashing a deadly red.  “Were you not put in charge of escorting her to the cafeteria and bringing her meals when she is working?”   
  
“Yes, Sir, but, well?  There is only a limited amount of stuff I can make that she will eat.”  
  
“What will she eat, then?”   
  
This did not make sense to Hordak.  Entrapta was no longer a prisoner and seemed quite willing – nay, enthused – to work with him.  She had insisted upon it, devoid of ideology, merely for the science of it all.  He was wise that her “small thinking” in suggesting the use of the portal-technology for troop-movement was merely what she’d thought he’d wanted to hear, a ploy to allow her to work with him on the project.  Ever since he’d revealed the existence of a universe hidden beyond the sterile sky, however, he had her – her work, her rapt attention, perhaps even her soul, for lack of a better term.  Entrapta could not be forgoing meals in protest.  He had explained the nutrient-slurry to her.  It was flavorless unless one wanted to add in some spice, so it could not have had an offensive flavor.  It had everything her body would need.  It was eminently logical to nourish herself, so why was she refusing?   
  
“She has…um…sensory-issues,” Scorpia tried to explain.  
  
“Issues?”  
   
“Yes, Sir.  She only eats tiny food.  I’ve been baking her cupcakes and making her small sandwiches, but it doesn’t seem like my cooking is quite what she is used to, either.  She eats some of it.”   
  
“I will not have her starving herself – not when we are so close.  Find a way to feed her.”   
  
The expression that Hordak gave her told her, in silence, the rest of what he’d wanted to say, namely “Or I will feed you to the beast-monster. Or through a fine mesh.”   
  
“Um, um…Sir?”  
  
“Yes, Force Captain?”    
  
“She’s told us that she had a cook-staff back in the Crypto-Castle in Dryl.  They’re a part of the Rebellion now.”   
  
“Listen closely, Scorpia.  I believe I have a mission of vital importance for you and Force Captain Catra.”     
  
  
  
__________________________________________________

“Eeee!  Baker! You’re here!  Sodapop and Garcon, too!”     
  
Entrapta bounced on her hair and threw herself into the arms of the large woman at the center of the three captives.   
  
“Aaaah!” the woman cried, taken aback.   
  
The other two people cringed and cowered as Hordak looked them over.   
  
“I trust you are unharmed?” the tyrant asked, his voice somewhere between menacing and strangely comforting.   
  
“Y-yes, Sir….” the young man with pointed ears said, not meeting his gaze.   
  
“Good.”   
  
“Goodness, girl!” the one identified as “Baker” said as she gently pried Entrapta off of her.  “We thought you were dead!”   
  
“Dead?” Entrapta asked with a cock of her head. “Why?”  
  
“It’s just what the Rebellion-folks told us,” Garcon sighed.    
  
“That’s not very nice,” Entrapta concluded.  She turned to Hordak and gesticulated with her hair to the three hapless cooks.  “This is Judy Baker… from a long family-line of the baking profession,” she explained with a broad smile.  “And this is Gracie…or Garcon… and this is Sodapop Smith.  It’s actually his real name, isn’t that cool?”   
  
“My…um…father had a thing for unique names,” he coughed.  
  
Hordak grunted.  The young man shrank.   
  
“Why have you brought us here?” Baker spoke up.  “We don’t have any special skills!  We were just the cook-staff for that Rebellion camp!  We don’t know anything!”   
  
“Relax,” Entrapta said.  “Hordkins is not going to hurt you.  Right?” 

Hordak scrunched up his nose.  “Hordkins?”   
  
“Well, you call me ‘Little Princess’ sometimes, so I thought you needed a nickname.  Isn’t it cute?  I mean, ‘Entrapta’ is already a nickname, not my real name, but-”  
  
“Enough,” Hordak intoned.  “You three were captured and brought here for a specific purpose.”   
  
The trio hugged each other, awaiting the worst.   
  
“You are to resume your duties to Princess Entrapta.  She is in my employ, so you will be staying in the Fright Zone.  You will have access to the kitchens - under strict supervision.”   
  
“They get their own quarters, right?” Entrapta asked.  “I don’t want them to be uncomfortable.  They’re the best staff ever – well, for organic-beings.  I never could get those kitchen-robots to work.  These three are the ones who’ve stuck with me the longest, so I want them to have the best, alright?”    
  
“Of course.”  Hordak regarded them.  “You shall have ample accommodations.  You shall prepare Entrapta’s meals in the morning, at noontime, and in the evening and also provide her any snacks or additional nutrition upon her request.  Do I make myself clear?”  
  
“Um…perfectly!” Sodapop said.  “Please don’t torture us!”  
  
“Take it easy!” Entrapta chimed.  “You’re just back to working for me.  How hard can it be?”   
  
Garcon cringed in fear against Baker’s ample frame.   
  
“You’ll get used to this place in no-time!” Entrapta assured.  “Everyone’s actually really nice here – They’re just soooo supportive of my scientific endeavors!”   
  
Hordak narrowed his eyes, communicating silently that Entrapta’s cooking-staff would be monitored very closely in regards to any attempted poisonings or escape-attempts.  Entrapta remained oblivious and cheerful.   
  
“Force Captain Scorpia will show you to the kitchens.  Grizzlor will follow in guard,” Hordak said with a grin tugging at the edges of his lips.  He showed his fangs.  “I trust that you will not disappoint me?”  
  
“N-no Sir!” Sodapop said with a hasty salute.  Baker and Garcon sighed and bowed.   
  
“Oh, they won’t!” Entrapta added.  “You’ll simply have to try Baker’s petit fours and Sodapop’s birch beer!”   
  
“Indeed.”   
  
Entrapta’s three cooks shivered and kept looking backward as they were escorted out of the sanctum by Grizzlor, Scorpia – who tried to cheer them up by chatting about the weather - and by a group of armored guards.   
  
“Hmmm,” Entrapta hummed as she formed a chair with her hair and sat upon it, her knees curled up to her chin.   
  
“Does something trouble you?” Hordak asked.   
  
“They said that they thought I was dead,” Entrapta mused.  She bit the knuckles of her right hand.  Hordak was sure that he saw tears form at the edges of her eyes.  “That means… well, that means that the Rebellion told them I was dead!  They didn’t come back for me at all… and it doesn’t seem like they wanted anybody else to, either. The Princess Alliance told everyone I was dead…They cut all ties to me – just like that.”  
  
Hordak stood beside her in silence.   
  
Entrapta sighed.  “The Princesses must have really not wanted me around, after all.”    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The names of Entrapta's staff-members are combinations of their job-listings in the credits and names I made up. I decided that "Sodapop" could be a real name because I read "The Outsiders" years ago and that book featured a protagonist named Ponyboy and his older brother, Sodapop (as real names, due to their father giving them odd names, as I recall). 
> 
> For the purposes of this story, I decided that they joined the Rebellion's regular-army soon after Entrapta's recruitment into the Princess Alliance and worked as cooks (an army moves on its stomach). Information about her alive-status just simply did not trickle down to them through the ranks before they got captured.


	4. No Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catra tries to pep-talk Entrapta about being on the field for an upcoming mission. It veers into rabbit-trails because Entrapta likes voicing her theories. Meanwhile, she has always been curious about Hordak's atmosphere-altering machine and ponders its capabilities for being weaponized. 
> 
> And she is too reckless for her own good.

**The King of Loneliness**  
  
  
_“I am falling_  
_I am fading_  
_I am drowning_  
_Help me to breathe.” – Duvet, Boa (Opening theme to “Serial Experiments Lain”)_  


__

**Chapter 4: No Mercy**  
  
  
“You are ruthless.”   
  
Catra was laughing.   
  
Entrapta spoke into her recorder.  “The feline-person seems to think that something is funny.”   
  
“It is, isn’t it?” Catra replied.  “You’re worried about what you’ll see being on the field for this upcoming battle.  It’s not like you haven’t already killed people.”   
  
Entrapta’s pented her fingertips.  “Well, I haven’t.”   
  
“Oh, haven’t you now?” Catra purred, swishing her tail as she walked around the scientist in a casual circle.  “Don’t you remember when you hacked the Black Garnet?  All of the natural disasters that caused?”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Entrapta began, twirling parts of her hair, “I wasn’t entirely sure what the outcome was going to be at the time.  I got the data of my dreams and then some!”   
  
“Don’t you think that some of those tidal waves and firestorms did a lot of killing?”   
  
“They certainly did a lot of damage, but most of the damage was to empty parts of Etheria – and to the Whispering Woods, and people should have enough sense to get out of the way when they see something big coming.”   
  
“Sometimes people don’t have time to get out of the way,” Catra insisted.  “And the upgrades on the war-bots you’re doing for us… we’ve been gaining a lot of ground. Those snooty Princesses really had no idea who they were leaving behind!  Trust me, Entrapta, you’ll do just fine.  You’re a total killer.”   
  
“If you say so.”   
  
“You don’t even have to get your gloves dirty.”  Catra was grinning at her, a fanged smile.  “I mean… I had such a time cleaning Adora’s blood off of my claws after the Battle of Bright Moon, the way it dried and got all over my fingers.  You… you just command your bots – nice and easy.  You’ve even got that impressive rust-proof coating you spray all over them.  Very neat and tidy.  I prefer the hands-on approach, myself.”   
  
“My observations of you do conclude that you have a sharp preference for melee’ combat techniques.”   
  
“What’s the fun of vanquishing someone if you can’t see the fear in their eyes?”   
  
“That’s what Hordak says.”   
  
“Really, now?”   
  
Entrapta stuck a curl of hair under her chin and looked toward the ceiling.  “Well, he does like sending troops to do the hard work of taking ground while he delegates the government and does focuses on the science of it all, but he’s told me a few war stories – most of them from back before the Horde came to Etheria.”   
  
“He never shared any war stories with me.”   
  
“You probably never asked!”   
  
“I’m not sure I’d want to hear them.”  
  
“They can get pretty boring.  I mean, one-on-one combat is pretty inefficient.  Now, a targeting-system that doesn’t put your troops at risk, that has greater possibilities.  I mean, as advanced as some of my work has gotten – even Emily doesn’t have quite the touch that an organic brain can bring to the table and it’s better to risk as few brains to death and injury as possible!  Even a lesser brain – well, speaking of humanoids – has something special about it.  Sometimes I think I’m this close to cracking the Problem of Consciousness only for it to blow up on me, but, hey, I keep learning! Would you like to hear my theories about neuroscience vs. cybernetics?”  
  
“Not right now,” Catra shut her down before she went on a week-long info-dumping tirade, “But you are saying that like… even Scorpia is smarter than Emily?”   
  
“I don’t know about _smarter_ ,” Entrapta mused, “but, more special? Yes, definitely.”   
  
“I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or an insult.”   
  
“It’s a compliment, believe me.” 

“I wrote an essay about it all once for Scientific Etherian!  Issue 99!  I’ve got it in one of my trunks somewhere…”   
  
“That’s…perfectly okay,” Catra said, holding up her hand.   
  
“What if I am incorrect in my assumptions about the Princesses? I suppose that is the reason why I have some illogical worries about being active on the field.”   
  
Catra’s right ear twitched.  “They left you to die, Entrapta.  They left you here and we could have tortured you or done who knows what to you had we wanted to.  We didn’t, but… they didn’t know that.  That’s just like Adora…”   
  
“Adora wasn’t there. She was getting Glimmer.  And I talked to Glimmer and Bow.  They said that they wanted to rescue me.”  Entrapta bounced on her hair.  “I’ve been trying to figure that out.  I don’t think that Bow and Glimmer wanted to leave me.  I think the others did, but they didn’t.  I think that maybe there must have been fight between them all and the rest of them told everybody that I was dead.  Now that I think about it, it was only Bow and Glimmer that captured you in Dryl, right?  They wanted to rescue me…”  
  
“But the others didn’t,” Catra finished for her.  “They obviously didn’t.  They should have come back months ago.  They probably all decided that we were kicking their butts too badly and only wanted you back to make stuff for them.  Don’t pretend they really cared.”   
  
“There is a high probability that the Princesses will show up on the battlefield. I have worries that when confronted with familiar faces that I might ‘freeze up’ as a reflex-reaction should I have to painfully incapacitate or eliminate them, even if they make themselves impediments to scientific progress.  Personal psychology is not one of my fields of expertise yet, although I have wanted to run some studies…”  
  
“Entrapta,” Catra sighed, exasperated.  “You need to get vengeful.  Learn a little anger.  You were _hurt_ when you realized they’d left you for two days when I found you.  I saw you crying.”  
  
“Why should I be angry? It worked out for the best! The Horde has the ultimate in resources! You let me do whatever experiments I want!  I get to work with Hordak and he is amazing! Did you know that he makes sure that my staff leaves tiny pancakes and mini-waffles for me every morning when I enter the sanctum?  And, of course, we’re going to open up the Portal, which is why we need to take Talon Mountain in the first place and I’ve got to be there to set up the signal beacon and the Vortex…oh, and Hordak makes sure there’s little sandwiches for me at lunchtime, and he’s even tried a few.  He really likes cherry soda – did you know that?”   
  
Catra flatted her ears and tried to drown out Entrapta’s random ramble.  “No, I did not.  It sounds like he’s really taking care of you.  I guess there has to be some compensation for spending all day in a stuffy lab.”   
  
“I could spend my entire life there!”  
  
“It seems like you do now.”  Even she noted the jealousy upon her own voice, although she wasn’t sure if Entrapta did.  “Anger could keep you from getting killed, you know – fire first before you’re fired at because they deserve it.  We’ll do our best to protect you, since you’re Hordak’s prized lab partner now, but you need to be merciless. You’ve been cold. You may need to become white-hot.”

“I don’t see what temperature has to do with this.”   
  
  
_____________________________________________________  
  
  
Entrapta was shuffling about in the ceiling-vents later on, trying to move from one part of Hordak’s sanctum to another and finding it easier to get to the wiring she wanted to tinker with that way than taking the open-floor.  Also, she really liked to nap up there.   
  
“THIS WAS A TEST – AND YOU FAILED!”  
  
Entrapta was jostled out of her snooze by the roar of Hordak.  She shimmied toward the sound, wondering what he was upset about and peeked through a grate.   
  
His artificial atmosphere machine was on, the area of the Sanctum it affected glowing an angry red – the indicator-lighting to the oxygen being depleted.  Entrapta had taken to calling it the Vortex.  It was Hordak’s personal area for getting “a breath of fresh air” every now and again, the irony being that it was a reverse of getting fresh air for any native Etherian.  Hordak used it to reduce oxidation on his cybernetics and to cleanse certain components of his body.  He was able to live in the Etherian atmosphere, but it was causing him a slow decay – which was something that Entrapta could see in the lesions on his skin when he divested himself of his outer armor. 

He no longer bothered to ask her to exit the area when he took his daily “baths” in the Vortex since she was usually tucked away in the vents or so intent on looking for one tool or another that she just wouldn’t leave. It was also a machine vital to the Portal – and something that they were both trying to figure out a workable field-version for in order to scrub a portion of the atmosphere free of particle-interference so they could achieve a lock-on signal.   
  
He had warned her to stay well-away from it when it was turned on.     
  
Catra was in the middle of the sea of red, on her knees and panting.   
  
Entrapta immediately loosened the grate and jumped out of the vent, vaulting to the floor with a practiced grace.  She wrapped her hair around Catra and pulled her back.  The cat-woman gasped sharply, catching her breath.   
  
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?”  Hordak demanded.   
  
Entrapta stood over Catra, keeping her tangled in her hair to show him that she was not letting her escape.  However, she glared at Hordak and let the bases of her ponytails frizz out.   
  
“You were killing her!”  
  
“I was teaching her a lesson!” Hordak growled.  “She is my Force Captain and her life is MINE!  She lied to my face after she failed to uphold her duty!”   
  
“Failure is inevitable and vital to learning!” Entrapta protested.   
  
Catra weakly moaned.  “Entrapta…why are you doing this?  Gonna get yourself killed…”   
  
“Catra is a skilled strategist,” Entrapta insisted coolly, holding up her right pointer-finger in front of Hordak.      
  
Catra blinked.  She was absolutely fearless.  It both impressed and frightened her.  This wasn’t even courage.  This was the lack of the emotion of terror before him whatsoever.  
  
Entrapta continued.  “If you destroy her you will be losing vital skills. Catra has an irreplaceable brain! She is the Force Captain who has so far brought you – us – the closest to victory!  She is extremely important to my endeavors and my research.  She is also of a unique species and I have been studying her closely.  Are you going to throw that all away just because she screwed up and told a little lie in the instinctual interest of her own survival?  Who was the last person to see Shadow Weaver?  I propose that Catra is the best person for tracking down this rogue element!”   
  
Hordak blinked in befuddlement and rubbed his chin. “I’m listening,” he said.  He shut down his machine. 

Catra’s eyes widened.   
  
“Perhaps I should remand her to your care as your personal text-subject. I am certain that she would make a fine lab-animal.”    

Catra did not like the smile that appeared on Entrapta’s face, but she was too tired and breathless to protest.   
  
Entrapta continued to glare up at him.  “Besides, you’re waiting potential in testing the Vortex on her.”   
  
Hordak quirked up an eyebrow.   
  
Entrapta uncoiled her hair from Catra and stepped into the circle of the Vortex.  “You should test it on me!”   
  
“Entrapta…” Catra gasped from her place on the floor.   
  
“Test it on me, Hordak!” Entrapta demanded cheerfully, her demeanor changing in a flash.  “Think about it!  We haven’t yet discussed the possibilities this technology has as a weapon against the Princesses!  We could figure out a way to set up localized bursts!  Or mount mini-Vortexes on battle-drones!  However, we need to know exactly how it affects Princesses first! You know…in case their powers allow them to withstand it.  Catra’s not a Princess, but I am! I may not be connected to a Runestone, but I do have some magic in my body!” 

She waggled both of her ponytails for emphasis.  “Besides, I’ve just been super-curious about this thing ever since I first saw it.”  
  
“I have told you to stay away from it,” Hordak intoned, “Because you are not expendable.”   
  
“I need to know what this thing is capable of first-hand.  Leave Catra out of it.  Run a test on me.  Pleeaaase?  I just really, really want to see how this works!”     
  
“Entrapta! You’re crazy!” Catra huffed.  She immediately shut her mouth when Hordak glared at her.   
  
Hordak’s hand hesitated as he put it to the switch.   
  
“Come on, Hordkins,” Entrapta coaxed.  “No mercy.”  
  
“You are not expendable.”     
  
“Then end the test if you see me in genuine distress. This has weapons-potential and I need to know first-hand how it works and what it feels like for those purposes.”   
  
“As you wish, Little Princess.”   
  
Hordak narrowed his eyes and flipped the switch.   
  
“No! Wait! What are you doing?” Catra yelped.   
  
Entrapta stood in the Vortex.  She issued a little choked-off squeak as the red lighting switched on and the oxygen began to be scrubbed from the inner circle.  Her hair frizzed and she planted her feet as if daring this pocket of the Void to do its worst.  She pulled the recorder from her hair and clicked the on-button, but found that she couldn’t form words.  She gaped as a gout of air was sucked from her lungs.  She dropped the recording-device with a clatter upon the floor.  She went to her knees, her eyes wide and her chest heaving.  She grit her teeth as veins began to pop along the skin of her neck and face. 

Hordak’s eyes went wide and he shut the machine down.   
  
Entrapta took in a quiet huff of breath through her nose as the oxygen returned.  Hordak and Catra both stared at her.  Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she dropped to the floor.   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point of the story - (if it wasn't already) this fanfiction is a canon-divergence. I severely doubt that future seasons (beyond Season 2, Episode 7) are going to be going in the same direction that I am. (If it did, I would be angry for a number of reasons. Fanfiction exists for fanfiction writers and readers. It's rebuilding the LEGOs into our own thing, in my case, like LEGO-Batman, I like to use black and gray). 
> 
> Also... 
> 
> She's not dead. She's not okay, but she's not dead.


	5. Progress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Weak, like all of these natives.
> 
> Weak, but he still needed her mind. 
> 
> Weak, but bold. 
> 
> She was not expendable.

**The King of Loneliness**  
  
  
_“I have spoke with the tongue of angels  
_ _I have held the hand of a devil  
_ _It was warm in the night_  
 _I was cold as a stone_  
 _But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” _ I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, U2_  


__

**Chapter 5: Progress**  
  
  
“Entrapta!” Catra cried, moving like lightning over to her.  Hordak stood by.  He was concerned, but could not show weakness in front of Catra, so he kept his expression unreadable.   
  
“Uhh?” Entrapta moaned as she rolled up onto all fours, Catra guiding her.   
  
“Are you okay?” she asked.   
  
Entrapta ignored her and caught her breath.  “Hordak…why…did you…stop? Needed…to…assess…m-more…”  
  
“You are needed.”  He answered.   
  
The ends of her hair snapped on the floor.  “Why are there insects all over the sanctum?” she asked.  “Emily, can you do something about this?”   
  
Emily toddled over with a worried beep and tried to nudge Entrapta to her feet with one of her legs.  Catra tried to help her up, as well.   
  
Entrapta kept slapping at imaginary creatures as Hordak grunted and bent down to gather her up in a bridal-carry.  She promptly passed out again in his arms.   
  
The warlord glared at Catra.  “You are dismissed, Force Captain. You have been spared your rightful punishment only because she is fond of you and sees you as strategically valuable.  Now go before I change my mind.”  
  
A bitter knot clenched in Catra’s stomach at the words “because she is fond of you.”  This was far from the first time that her life was seen as having a value by an authority only because of a friend’s regard.  She made haste to exit the sanctum.   
  
Hordak shifted Entrapta in his arms and observed her small, hitching breaths.  He took a hallway to the Horde’s emergency-infirmary.  He discouraged shows of weakness, but the infirmary was an occasional necessity for particularly valuable soldiers that had been injured and could be repaired.  Most troops and trainees hid their sicknesses and anything mild enough to be self-treated.   
  
A trip to the infirmary was a dangerous business.  Ambition and infighting among the ranks had lead to the occasional sickbed-slaying in the past.  If any top-tier captains were ill, trusted guards would be posted outside their room, but it did not always guarantee a lack of interference.  Even the grave penalties that came with being caught attempting a murder (some of these penalties being worse than death in the eyes of most persons) did not always discourage the ambitious from trying to open up a promotion-position should they remain hidden and slip from justice.   
  
Entrapta’s position wasn’t any that was on the books, nor was it one that anyone else could aspire to.  A native-Etherian First Ones’ technology-expert was unique.  Just in case, however, Hordak beckoned Imp and Emily to follow him.  The small medical-crew that was always on-duty with the infirmary’s upkeep was, needless to say, surprised when their intimidating leader stepped through the doorway.  The doctors each immediately took a knee.   
  
“Rise,” Hordak ordered.   
  
They remained silent before him as one of them switched on a floating gurney and awkwardly pushed it toward him.  He laid Entrapta down upon it, letting her hair-tails drip to the floor.   
  
“There was an unexpected outcome in one of our experiments,” he explained.  “She has suffered asphyxiation.  Fix her.”   
  
He snapped his fingers, summoning Emily and Imp from the corridor.  “If anything goes wrong, I will know,” he threatened.   
  
  
__________________________________________________________________  
  
  
Later in the evening, well after the day-moons had set and the paler night-moons were riding high in the vacant sky, Hordak returned to the infirmary.  He was directed to a private room and glared at the guards standing outside of it.  They swiftly saluted and let him in.  They kept their gazes ahead as the door slid shut behind him.   
  
The main lights were dimmed in the room, but a single bed was illuminated starkly by the screens of monitoring equipment.  An obnoxious “grrrt!” sound issued from the intravenous fluid machine.   
  
Entrapta lay in a loose gown, covered to the chest by a thin blanket in the bed.  Small puffs of breath left moisture on the inside of a clear mask over part of her face. Her hair draped over the sides of the bed, still in tails. Hordak pulled up the single chair in the room and sat down beside her.  He narrowed his eyes and scrunched up his nose as he looked her over.   
  
Weak, like all of these natives.   
  
But he still needed her mind.   
  
Weak.  
  
But he enjoyed their conversations and was impressed with her knowledge – perhaps the only being on this forsaken planet that he could begin to consider an intellectual equal.     
  
Weak.  
  
But bold.   
  
She was not expendable.   
  
He took her right hand in his and held it up, elbow-to-elbow on the edge of the bed.   
  
She was deeply asleep.  He had been informed that she would likely remain so for several hours.  The physicians were glad to report (for their own sakes) that Entrapta would make a full recovery given some oxygen and rest.  It was probable that she would be awake by morning and operational within 24 hours.   
  
Hordak would give her 48 – to be sure of her functionality.   
  
Imp had nothing to report and was currently off doing his rounds around the barracks and the guard-stations.  Emily was hunkered in a corner of the room, on low-power mode, but ready to fire a laser-canon upon anyone who would threaten her “mother” should the need arise.  Hordak glanced at her and then at Entrapta’s limp hand in his.  He was frustrated with himself.  He was clearly becoming attached.  This was uncomfortable.  If there was one thing he had learned during his military career and his reign, it was that attachments were a liability, family of any kind most of all.      
  
Entrapta’s hand was bare for the time being and Hordak noticed the little details of it.  Bitten nails. Calloused tips and pads.  Faint little scars from various, unknown sources all up and down the arm.  He recognized some as small burns – probably from tiny torches and electric-sparks. One looked like she might have gouged herself with a scalpel or a screwdriver.  She was sometimes a bit reckless when wielding tools in her hair while steadying things with her hands.   
  
He laid her hand back down on the bed, over her blanket.  He rose, nodded to Emily as a signal to keep up her guard-duty and exited the room.  He gave the pair of guards outside the door a dour look.  They had not seen or heard anything.   
  
No one was to know what he had just done.   
  
  
_____________________________________________________  
  
  
“Have you ever given thought to obtaining cybernetic enhancements?”   
  
“Of course I have.  Thought of brain-uploading into a robot-body, too.  Decided against both.”   
  
Hordak hovered over Entrapta’s shoulder as she tinkered with some circuitry on Emily.  She held up one ponytail in a hand-shape to signal to him not to do that.  Hordak backed up.  He was forgetting his manners.  He’d always hated it whenever any of his old crew had hovered over him and, of course, he was standing in her light.   
  
“How come?” he inquired.  “While I do regret my prior reliance upon my old technicians, I believe that I can assist in a transition.  Some enhancements come with many benefits.”  
  
“As well as some detriments,” Entrapta replied, turning to face him.  Her welding mask obscured her face.  “I never could figure out how to do a proper brain-upload, for instance.  There are just too many iffy factors.  The best I’d be able to do would merely create a copy, a recording – and even that’s in the hypothetical stage!  I can get the A.I. in my bots to react and adapt, but it’s not the same thing as transferring the mind of an organic being.”   
  
“I was not speaking of a robotic-transfer,” Hordak said calmly, “merely cybernetic enhancements.”   
  
Entrapta put up her mask and smiled excitedly.  “Oh, I do think that being a cyborg must be super-cool, and maybe someday, but I’m declining that for now.  Thanks for the thought, though!  I just think that there is too much I can do right now while fully-organic… just the way muscles, bones and my reflexes work! I also don’t know if I’d be able to keep my hair-magic if I enhanced myself tooooo much.”   
  
“There are augments that would enable you to survive in a variety of environments that are inaccessible to you right now.”   
  
“Hmmm,” Entrapta mused.  “Well, I have explorer-bots for stuff like that.”  
  
“You could go yourself.”   
  
“Yes, but… You might find it surprising how attached I am to my body.”  She put a hand over her chest. “It seems like everyone who knows me thinks that my dream would be to become a robot, right?  It’s not that I haven’t given it a lot of thought, but there’s too much I can do as I am!”  She smirked.  “I’m sure I’ll figure out exaaaactly what enhancements I really want when I’m older.  Also, some of my experiments like to…um…explode.  I don’t want to risk fried circuits on myself!”   
  
Hordak gave her a short, almost imperceptible nod.   
  
“Also, don’t think I haven’t noticed… your troubles.  If you would let me get a better look at you, I might be able to help!”   
  
Hordak let his eyes go downcast.  “It is true that I am in some level of pain all the time.  It is nothing that I cannot live with.  I will not allow myself to show weakness. Adversity breeds strength.”    
  
He jumped back when he noticed a subtle tickle along his side.  He looked down at himself to see a tendril of purple hair that had crept up on him, escaping his prior notice.  
  
“STOP THAT!” he roared, baring his teeth at her.   
  
Entrapta immediately shrank back and slammed her welding mask down again.   
  
“I’m sure I could help,” she said before turning around and going back to her work. 


	6. The Battle of Talon Mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a high-stakes game of plant-the-flag. War exacted prices, both in body and soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shout-out thanks to virovac of tumblr for issuing a couple of random writing-prompts regarding Kyle that I pinched the idea of to incorporate into this chapter. 
> 
> Apologies ahead of time for the fate of Shadow Weaver. I had no idea what to do with her. Remember that this is a canon-divergent fanfic.

**The King of Loneliness  
  
  
** _“War, huh!  
What is it good for?  
Absolutely nothin’ uh-huh, uh-huh!  
War, huh!_

 _What is it good for?  
Absolutely nothin’  
Say it again, ya’ll!”  
  
It ain’t nothin’ but a heartbreaker  
_ _War, friend only to the undertaker.” _ War, Edwin Starr_ **  
  
**

**Chapter 6: The** **Battle** **of** **Talon** **Mountain**  
  
  
Dawn broke over edges of Talon Mountain.  Emily paced in its shadow, Entrapta firmly seated atop her, wielding twin cables like reins affixed to two of her legs.  Entrapta had upgraded her friend again, this time some body-work to restore her original size as well as some weapons-work.  By far, the most important of the upgrades were the reason why they were at Talon Mountain in the first place:  The Horde’s mission for today was to get Entrapta and Emily to the top.  There, Entrapta would plant a transmitter (carried inside a storage-compartment that she’d fitted Emily with) that was the last piece of the puzzle to create Hordak’s portal.  She had also fitted Emily with a remote-device that was meant to create a localized vortex, which would scrub atmospheric interference away, allowing the signal from the portal to “break the sky.”  Entrapta and Hordak had come up with that description together when going over calculations.     
  
The young scientist was clad in armor with technological features that she had designed herself.  Catra had called it “tacky.”  Entrapta thought it was plenty classy.  It was plated in gold.  She had a chest-guard designed to emit an invisible force-shield around her person and flatter her figure.  The thigh-high boots were built for any terrain, with special grips on the soles for mountaineering. She had gauntlets on her wrists – the right one was just a gauntlet while the left one contained a small computer that could be accessed by flipping up a panel.  The computer gave Entrapta readings on her vitals and could scan targets to assess the most likely part of their body she could hit at range.  The whole kit-and-caboodle was keyed into a headband that she wore, designed to read subtle electrical impulses from her brain to carry out commands – not unlike how she controlled her hair. She completed the outfit with a high fabric collar that wrapped beneath her arms and behind her neck – “just for show,” and a purple and magenta skirt “for modesty.”   
  
Catra and Scorpia were dressed in their usual garb.  Scorpia had plenty of natural armor while Catra chose agility over defense.  Rogelio stood by, clad in a standard-issue Horde trooper armor modified for the large lizard-folk frame.  Kyle shivered beside him, dressed in a slimmer version.  Lonnie barked at him that it wasn’t his first battle and to stop quaking and that he’d “better not screw up like last time.”   
  
Horde troopers of various ranks formed a semi-circle around the base of the mountain.  Horde battle-drones hunkered down by them.  There were a few drone-flyers.  Entrapta thought that it might have been easier just to take a flyer to the mountain’s summit, but everything she needed for the portal and the supporting-vortex was either programmed into or carried by Emily.  She’d tried to modify flyers for the task, but they’d kept exploding and Hordak had been growing weary.   
  
Besides, this wasn’t just a battle to place technology.  This was a territory skirmish as much as anything.   
  
“Patience, Emily,” Entrapta coaxed as her robot stepped forward and back.  “We can’t go until we get the signal.”  She took a pair of scanning binoculars to view the mountain.  As predicted, there were winged shapes circling it.   
  
Talon Mountain belonged to the harpies.  They were a people who had been loosely loyal to the Horde for a long time; not a part of the Horde, but they had served as marginal allies due to an ancient enmity with many of the other kingdoms and with Bright Moon in particular.  When Hordak announced that he wished to take over their territory for his own purposes, however, not all of the harpies left the area. The greater number of them vacated to other mountain strongholds, but Hunga, their queen, had gathered her most faithful soldiers and mounted a resistance.   
  
Horde spies had returned with news that the Harpy Resistance had solicited aid from the Rebellion and had gained them as allies.  The Rebellion had caught wind that the Horde was poised to take the mountain, but did not know for what purpose.  All the same, troops from Bright Moon and their allied kingdoms were gathered at the foot of the other side of the mountain, fully prepared to prevent the Horde from ascending it.   
  
It was essentially a high-stakes game of plant-the-flag.  
  
Entrapta heard a beep from her left gauntlet and opened it up to see Catra’s face on a video screen.   “Advance on the north face,” the Force Captain said.  “We’ll cover you.  Good luck.”  
  
“Yahahaaa!” Entrapta laughed.  “This is gonna be fun!  I’m already gathering loads of data on troop formation and tactical positions!”  
  
“Just focus.  And try not to get yourself killed.”   
  
“Oh, I’ll definitely try! Um… not to die, I mean.”  
  
“Ugggh!”    
  
Entrapta was not to engage in combat if she could avoid it.  Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t even be on a battlefield.  She was now the Horde’s most valued engineer and, like Hordak, generally remained in the Fright Zone creating weapons and systems.  She was only here because she was the only one who could accomplish the goal-task.  If she fell in battle, all was lost, so she was to risk herself as little as possible.  The entire squad looking after her were in acute danger of exile to Beast Island should anything bad happen to her (Catra especially so after her little incident of lying to Hordak – and she still hadn’t tracked down Shadow Weaver).  Even with an entire squadron protecting her and Emily’s cannon charged up below her seat, Entrapta was quite nervous.  She tried not to show it.   
  
“M…Miss Entrapta?” Kyle asked, “Are we moving ahead?”  
  
“Yep!” she replied.  “Just stay behind me until we get to the first foothill, then Rogelio should help you get into position!”   
  
Entrapta had recently noticed a particular talent in Kyle that others had overlooked:  He was poor at close-quarters melee-combat, but a test in calibrating a new laser rifle she’d designed had showed that Kyle was quite competent in distance-shooting.  Although this ability hadn’t been tested outside of the target-range yet, Entrapta was confident to have him as her personal sniper.  Once planted into a position in which he had a reasonably clear view of most of the mountain, his mission was to keep enemies off of her as she ascended a trail on the north face.  The rest of the squadron would engage with Rebellion soldiers as she kept Emily and drone bots of her model close.   
  
She hoped that the kid wouldn’t be hurt or worse.  He was a good research-assistant.   
  
The sounds of laser-fire and explosions rocked the air as the battle was joined.  Rebels shouted and charged, spears and swords shining in the bright day-moonlight.  Robots blasted through rock and Rebel alike.  Through the general confusion, Entrapta sighted a strange walking robot of a model she’d never seen before.  It hunkered down upon the ground like a fat chicken – that was the first image that came to her mind – and let loose with a volley of arrows that exploded as they hit Horde-drones and scattered troops.   
  
“One of Bow’s designs?” she guessed.  She couldn’t help but smile.  His work was becoming impressive.  Of all of the would-be friendships she’d lost over the years, she’d regretted losing companionship with him the most.  He understood much and did such good work.   
  
Emily teetered out of the way as an arrow sailed their way.  It exploded against mountain rocks, causing a small landslide.   
  
“Emily! Forward!” Entrapta cried.   
  
The small rockslide had created an easier way up to the path they sought.  Emily capered over it like a round, unwieldy mountain goat.   
  
And, Entrapta ducked as a bolt of red energy almost took one of her ponytails off.  
  
“Oops! Sorry!” Kyle called in the distance.   
  
As she ascended, she watched Horde and Rebellion solders engaged in full melee-combat – swords and spears against taser-batons.  Bolts of ice suddenly shot across the battlefield, followed by jets of water and enormous vines and roots entrapping Hordesmen. The Princess Alliance had arrived.   
  
Entrapta mused that she rather liked Perfuma’s technique.   
  
She made haste to stay out of sight of them.  Looking skyward, she sighted a winged beast the size and shape of a horse.  When it came into view – it was a horse; a unicorn, more precisely.  The abnormally-tall-one was astride it.  Entrapta heard a squawk from her communication gauntlet.  Catra wasn’t hailing her, but it came through, anyway.  “Hey, Adora.”   
  
Entrapta hailed a reply. “Keep She-Ra distracted for me, alright?  I don’t want her to hurt Emily!”  
  
“Already on it, ‘Trap!”   
  
Entrapta skittered around the mountain.  “Come on, Emily, you can do it!”   
  
As she wended around a rock outcrop, she saw Bow.  He was firing into a line of Horde bots and was not aware of her presence.   
  
Emily made a sound, indicating the readiness of her cannon.  Entrapta had a clear shot on him.  If she fired, he wouldn’t even know what hit him.   
  
A quick, merciful death for an enemy soldier.  
  
She bid Emily to hunker down.  She waited.  She watched.   
  
She breathed a sigh.  “Let’s go, Emily.”  The robot turned around and took another path.  
  
She had to go down before starting an ascent again.  As she found purchase on the rocks, Emily picked her way over a corpse.  A young Horde trooper with a shattered helmet lay half on his side, his torso twisted.  His eyes were wide and dull, his mouth caught in a gape.   
  
“Screeeeee!”   
  
“Huh? Whoa!”   
  
Entrapta snapped to attention as a harpy careened right for her, teeth and talons bared.  The technician reacted quickly, signaling Emily to fire.  She raised her right gauntlet to block her face from the ensuing spray of blood, bone-fragments and feathers.  A few flecks landed on Emily.  Entrapta couldn’t tell if any had landed on her, but she felt clean.   
  
“Close one!” she panted.  She immediately brought out her recorder.  “I have just experienced making my first kill in a direct combat situation,” she said into it.  “My heart-rate is elevated.  My skin feels tingly.  I believe I am experiencing an acute rush of adrenaline.  Emily’s cannon fired as expected.  The enemy – a young harpy – has been disintegrated, more or less.  Her remains are in a grizzled state.  She likely felt no pain.  I cannot say that I am happy over her demise, although I am overjoyed at my own survival!  Lord Hordak said that it felt like a rush.  He was accurate, at least in the physiological effects.  I honestly cannot say that I am either proud or remorseful.”   
  
She patted Emily.  “Good girl,” she said, snapping the reins to move her forward.  Explosions sounded in the sky.  She-Ra had swept in an arc on her steed to take out a pair of flyers.  Another airborne figure caught Entrapta’s attention.  She must have left her castle well-guarded.  He hailed Catra on her gauntlet, anyway.   
  
“Catra?  Did you know that Queen Angella is here?  Doesn’t that leave Bright Moon vulnerable?”   
  
“Dammit, Entrapta!  I’m busy here! Hordak ordered us to take the mountain and She-Ra is right here! Scorpia is already on the com to the Fright Zone.  We’re taking care of it!  Do not engage!”  
  
“Don’t worry! I’m just observing!  Oooh, Fascinating! She’s using bolts of hard-light from her hands!  Ooh, I think she got Grizzlor!”   
  
“Do not engage!”   
  
Angella was a picture of grace.  Entrapta thought her flight-patterns to be very like a falcon’s – swift and sharp.    She blasted Horde soldiers in the chest, downing and stunning them, or otherwise aimed for the face to blind them.  The mechanics of her flight should have been impossible, Entrapta thought – humanoids just did not have the deep chests or light bones that served birds, but Angella’s wings were magical in nature – made of a kind of hard light.  She was able to fly by manipulating photons, themselves.  
  
Come to think of it, Entrapta had long figured that she should have been hung by her own hair, the way she used it, but she seemed to have an especially tough neck, able to withstand the pressures of swinging and dangling by a ponytail.  All the same, she watched how Angella dipped her body to compensate for the lift in her wings.  Forgetting her mission for a moment, she scribbled a few things down on a writing pad she carried in her hair.  That’s when Angella spotted her.   
  
“Aaah!”  she cried as she tried to veer Emily out of the way of the light blasts Angella was readying.  Emily was stuck on a flat edge of the mountain that there was no safe way down from and she’d already left her flank-bots far behind.  In an instant, a red laser-blast tore through Angella’s left wing, bloodlessly shattering hard light feathers into so many fractal colors upon the air.  The blast had come from Kyle’s perch.  Entrapta dialed up the listening device in her headband to get a feel for everything that was going on.   
  
The Queen of Bright Moon tumbled tail over head until a large, feathery shape swooped down.  Entrapta recognized Hunga from a database photo.  Hunga caught Angella by the shoulders and flew her safely to the ground, screeching “You owe me one!” before darting off to aid the remainder of her own troops.   
  
Princess Glimmer teleported beside her.  “Mom!  You’re hurt!”   
  
“I can still fight! And I’ll regenerate back home!” she replied.  “Back to back with me!  Entrapta is up there!”   
  
Entrapta was just close enough to see Glimmer glaring daggers at her.  Well, she didn’t have a detailed view of the Princess’ face, in truth, but she knew, somehow, that it must have been the expression Glimmer was wearing.  She used to glare at her a lot.   
  
“Perfuma!  Interference!”   
  
“I’m on it!”   
  
As Emily leapt up to a narrow trail, Perfuma came up surfing upon a forest’s worth of tangled vines.   
  
“Entrapta! Why are you doing this? Just explain to us why you are doing this!”  
  
The two women paused, standing and staring at each other, each reluctant to attack the other outright, although Perfuma’s vines were wiggling and Emily’s cannon was charged.   
  
“You don’t have any idea what I’m doing!” Entrapta shot back.  “I’m on a mission for Science! Out of my way!”   
  
“No, Entrapta,” Perfuma said with a shake of her head.  “Please, you have to see how wrong it is to work for the Horde!  They hurt innocent people!  They’re trying to take the land and the freedom of this proud…um…bird-people nation!  They’re hurting the planet and the trees and…YOU ARE A PRINCESS!  Have you forgotten that?”  
  
“The Horde’s treated me better than the Princesses ever did.”  Entrapta said, giving Perfuma a flat expression.  “They’re supportive of all my research!  Hordak listens to me!”  
  
“Hordak…Listen to yourself!”   
  
“He saved my life!  Which is more than the Alliance ever did!”   
  
Perfuma gave her a dumbfounded look.  Entrapta felt herself growing angrier and angrier.  This was honestly a new experience for her.  She wasn’t given to strong emotion of this nature.  She was, much of the time, joyous, excitable and tingly – whenever making a new discovery or deep in a creative project, but negativity wasn’t something usual for her.  She found it illogical, yet here she was, face-to-face with one of the people who’d outright abandoned her.  Bow had tried to reason with her in a similar fashion, but Entrapta fell under the assumption of his innocence regarding the abandonment and subsequent cover-up.  From Perfuma, a speech on ethics was just sanctimonious.   
  
“You left me!” she shouted.  “If you cared about keeping me from working with the Horde, you shouldn’t have left me with them!”   
  
Perfuma’s jaw quivered.  Was she starting to cry?   
  
“Entrapta, WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!”   
  
“Huh?” 

 “You got caught in the exit-chamber! And the flame-purge came down…”   
  
“Emily…” Entrapta mused, recalling how she had survived.   
  
“And we thought you were burnt to ashes!  Nothing even left to go back for!  You were dead!  And we grieved you!  We even broke up for a while!  And…and… I made a statue of you in Plumeria and I left it up even after finding out you were alive and were a traitor because I was hoping you’d come back to us… and… Entrapta…stop this!  We want you back!”   
  
“Isn’t it too late? I mean, I hacked the Black Garnet…I’ve made loads of weapons for the Horde… I’m Hordak’s best lab partner and it’s so awesome!”   
  
“Entrapta, please…”   
  
“And how do I know you aren’t lying?”   
  
“Entrapta, no…”   
  
The scientist shook her head.  “I don’t think Bow and Glimmer wanted to leave me behind, but I know the rest of you had trouble with me.  People are unpredictable, not like machines.  Social experiments are interesting, but, in the end, everybody leaves me… except Catra and Scorpia and Hordak.”   
  
“You don’t know what you’re doing!”   
  
“I know exactly what I’m doing!  Pretty soon, this war is going to become really pointless!  There are other worlds out there, Perfuma!  And we’re going to contact them!  Think of the discoveries!  Think of the science!  I’m not sure I should be giving away the plan to you since it was supposed to be Top Secret and all, but... yeah!  We aren’t alone!  We aren’t the only world to exist!  I’m about to find out where the First Ones came from and no Princess is going to stop me!”   
  
“The Horde is lying!” Perfuma shot back.  “They have to be!  They’ve damaged the world, oppressed all our people!  They must be planning to destroy everything!”   
  
“How do you know?”   
  
“How do you know Hordak’s not lying to you?”   
  
“Because I’m using him just as much as he’s using me!”   
  
Perfuma glared.   
  
“Hordak takes care of me, which is more than any of you have done!”   
  
“I will stop you! I don’t want to have to hit you with flowers, but I will!”   
  
With that, Perfuma lashed out with her vines.  Entrapta countered with her hair.  “Emily!  Go!” she yelled to her robot.   
  
Emily capered to the summit as Entrapta flailed with Perfuma, evenly matched.   
  
“Preeeecuuuutioooon….chaaaarge!”  the former Princess of Dryl shouted as she was curled in a vine and shaken in the air.   
  
The atmosphere was rocked with a burst of energy.  Perfuma screamed as she was thrown down the mountain.  Entrapta had her force-shield enacted and flipped over gracefully on her hair.  She swung herself up on rocks until she reached the summit.  She swiftly opened Emily’s hatches, brought out tools from both Emily and her own hair and got to work.  She speed-built as she listened to battlefield reports.  She occasionally craned her neck to take a look at what was happening below.   
  
Something about Shadow Weaver being there?   
  
Then Shadow Weaver being killed?   
  
Catra was engaging with She-Ra.   
  
The Rebels were rallying to protect Queen Angella.  
  
Frosta was gravely wounded, as was Bow.  
  
Perfuma was hurt, as well, and was shouting something about her.   
  
She-Ra was calling a retreat.    

  
  
  
______________________________________________________________  
  
  
She was bone-tired in the bath that night, listless as she let her bathing robots scrub the filth from her hair.   
  
Talon Mountain now belonged to the Horde.  Soon, Hordak would ascend it himself to switch on the localized vortex and to open the portal.  Entrapta was to do support from the Fright Zone, running what was necessary to stabilize the signal.  She wondered what world they were going to open a gateway to.  Hordak said that, if all went well, he would be seeing some old colleagues again.  They would require the scrubbed atmosphere that was to be in place in and around Talon Mountain, which was why Entrapta could not go and greet them directly.  This is why Hordak had to go turn everything on.  Only he and select Horde troops with similar physiology to his could attend the “Grand Opening.”   
  
It planned to have a few vortex-areas around the Fright Zone so the aliens from the Horde’s primary world could comfortably move about.  These were already mapped so that that native-Etherian troops could avoid them.   
  
Entrapta predicted that Hordak would start to become happier when he could breathe easier and was no longer in pain all the time.   
  
She couldn’t help but let her thoughts drift back to Perfuma’s words – and to how she had chosen to spare Bow.  She could have gone back to the Rebellion at any time; that much was true, but if she had, she would never have known that portal-technology was more than a theory. She wouldn’t have had the opportunity to work on it.  She wouldn’t be able to give this planet the chance to see what was beyond the sky.   
  
She probably would have still seen dead soldiers.  Even though the Rebellion, as she knew it, was keener on capturing than killing whenever possible, she, or at least her automated weapons probably would have had to do a share of killing for it, in the end.  War was war.   
  
When her drier-bot had finished getting most of the damp out of her hair and she’d gotten it back up into tails, she donned her usual, much more comfortable clothes.  She dismissed her bots and stepped out into one of the halls, which was crowded with a celebration around one figure.   
  
“Way to go, Kyle!  The Angelslayer!”   
  
“Well, I didn’t actually kill her, I just winged her a little…”   
  
Entrapta flashed him a smile.  “Thanks for that!  You saved me out there!”   
  
He blushed as Rogelio lifted him up on his shoulders and various soldiers whooped.   
  
“Hordak wants you in the infirmary’s second wing,” Lonnie informed her.   
  
“I’ll be there right away.”   
  
Entrapta walked where indicated.  She entered and paused for just a moment when she saw many beds covered in white sheets, forms beneath them.  Hordak stood before one of these beds.   
  
“Ah, Entrapta,” he said.  “I trust that you are rested?”   
  
“As well as I can be.”   
  
He motioned to a tray of medical tools.  “You seemed a little dispirited upon returning from today’s battle, despite the victory.”   
  
“I’ve just… had a lot to think about.”   
  
“I know that you have been itching to do some study of…abnormal anatomy.”   
  
He pulled the sheet back from the head of the figure on the bed – a large reptilian-trooper, someone whose face and name was unknown to her.   
  
“He fell in battle today.  I think he should provide an ideal dissection subject.  I’ll leave you to your work.”   
  
Entrapta smiled as Hordak turned and left.  She picked up a scalpel and held her recorder in tendril of her hair.   
  
The man really knew how to treat a girl.   
     
  



	7. Conquest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Remember what I told you. You can learn a lot from failure."

**The King of Loneliness**  
  
  
_“Sterile soil_

_Will harden_

_Wasted world_

_My garden.” _ Beauty Bleak, Miracle of Sound (fan song for the Fallout game series)_ ****  
  


**Chapter 7: Conquest**  
  
  
“Smack!”   
  
Hordak blinked twice, utterly confused by the gesture.    
  
“Hmmm,” he rumbled.  “What, pray tell, was that for?”    
  
Entrapta had just lifted herself up on her hair and pressed her soft lips against one of his cheeks.    
  
“Luck,” she answered. “It’s not exactly the most scientific thing… and I can’t really say that I believe in luck, but…it’s for luck, anyway.  It’s a common Etherian custom.”  She returned to the console that they’d built together for mapping and regulating the signal for the portal atop Talon Mountain.  She would be running things here, while Hordak was to run what was needed there.    
  
“Oh! This is going to be so exciting!”  She clapped her hands together, bounced on her hair-tails and her eyes sparkled.    
  
Hordak would be loath to admit it to anyone, but he’d grown to enjoy seeing her like this.  It stirred something within him – a faded remembrance of his younger self, when he was a young scientist just beginning his military career.  He hoped that conquest would not also make her weary.  At this point, he was imagining them striding together, side-by-side upon distant worlds they’d put under their heels, revered for their science, feared for their might.  It was a strange thought – having a partner in this manner.  Entrapta wasn’t even his second-in-command, not officially, anyway.    
  
They would be anything but usual in terms of conquerors that strode side-by-side.  He had made her well aware in one conversation or another that with his body’s improvements and mental interests, that he was beyond “that which compelled lesser beasts to breed,” in his terms.  She’d said as much for herself – “no need for anything like that!” in her terms, with a scrunched up nose at his wording.  She also had her “hair rule,” that is, she was much more comfortable with physical contact with a non-sensitive part of her body than with having any part of her skin touched.  Imp took advantage of this sometimes, poking her in the shoulder while she was working and spooking her, until Hordak had taken notice and put a stop to it. 

 

All of this was why her gesture had taken him in utter shock.     
  
“Luck,” he said, dully.  “We shall not need it.  All is going according to plan.”    
  
“That it is!  Now don’t you have a mountain to get to, Hordkins?”   
  
“Yes,” the warlord answered with a pause, “May I return the luck?”   
  
“Huh?”    
  
He gently took a lock of her hair in one of his armored hands and placed a kiss upon it.    
  
“Oh!” Entrapta said.  “Okay!”  She lifted herself up on her tails, allowing Hordak to place a small kiss on her cheek.  “More luck is better, right?”    
  
“Indeed.”    
  
“Go on, I’ll be right here coordinating everything!  Well, Emily, too, right, Emily?”    
  
Emily issued a happy beep as Hordak swished his cape, turning to exit.    
  
  
___________________________________________________________  
  
  
He took a flyer to the mountain.  A battalion waited below, guarding the newly-captured territory.  He was saluted as he stepped onto the upper trail leading to the peak and placed himself before the consoles that Entrapta had built there.    
  
Hordak dismissed his guard-detail to wait for him further down the mountain.  He smiled as he punched in the coordinates.  He remembered the old codes after all these years and knew just what message he wanted to send.  “A soft planet with useful resources, one of _their_ projects” and, more importantly, “Perhaps despite the fondest wishes of some of you, I have survived.”    
  
Two spires behind him shifted apart on rails.  Arcs of electricity swirled over each of them and sparked between them to form a swirling pattern of golden light.  Hordak flipped a large switch on the ground.  While the portal was forming, he needed to initiate the atmospheric vortex.  It worked as predicted.  The sky around the peak of Talon Mountain turned red as the composition of the air changed.  Wind kicked up debris as a strange form of a void-tornado formed around the mountain.    
  
Hordak laughed.  “It has begun!”  He turned to the console to watch the readings.  He turned on the communications.  “Keep it steady, Entrapta!  It is working!”    
  
In reply he heard heavy coughing.  He blinked.  “Entrapta?”   
  
“Something….something’s gone…wrong!”    
  
“The portal is opening! Keep the signal steady!”   
  
“Your personal vortex is…”  She was coughing again, “It’s going crazy!  I can’t cut the power…”   
  
Hordak took a look at his digital maps.  There were anomalous readings all over the planet.  He felt like all of fluids within his body had frozen.        
  
There were atmospheric change vortexes opening up randomly all over Etheria.    
  
This wasn’t the plan!    
  
To be fair, if this had been the result he’d encountered if he had managed to get the portal working a year ago, it would have been within acceptable parameters.  Hordak had never wanted to completely destroy Etheria – only to bring it under his reign.  His mission was to take planets for the Horde – their resources and their people to work, willingly or not.  Sacrificing some organisms and even entire populations fell within the plan, but destroying all of the native life on the planet had never been seen as optimal. As it was, he would have accepted it as a secondary result a short time ago, as long as the mineral and technological resources remained intact, despite it being a less-desired condition.    
  
Now, however, he had a far different attitude.  _She_ \- blast her – had opened his eyes to there being too much to study here, too much to learn, too much to know.  Etheria had value alone for being _her_ project, _her_ object of study.     
  
And even more… _her_.  She was fully-organic and dependant upon the native conditions!     
  
“ENTRAPTA!” Hordak screamed into the com-unit, “Do you read me?!”   
  
“Loud and…*hack*…clear.”   
  
“I missed a point in our calculations.  There are vortexes opening up all over Etheria, encompassing more than just the location of Talon Mountain.  According to the readings I am getting, they are joining and scrubbing the entire atmosphere.  Nothing I am doing is reversing the process.”   
  
“I’ll….keep…working…on…it.”    
  
Her words were labored, breathy.  She continued transmitting.  “Going to…go down to the infirmary.  Get an oxygen tank…will…return…to sanctum…and try to…reverse this…”   
  
The portal behind Hordak spun in gold and resembled one great, unlidded eye.  He turned his back to it and made his way to his personal flyer.  His soldiers – off-planet Horde natives and their descendants, the mechanically-altered, the only type that could join him up here for the mission, nodded to him as he barked orders in regards to keeping the portal stable. 

He punched the speed up, making a bee-line to the Fright Zone.    
  
The entirety of the sky looked like it had been soaked in blood.  Lightning split it, even where there were no clouds.    
  
Time ran too slow.  How had this morning’s trip to Talon Mountain been so expedient while the return trip so agonizingly long?  As the flyer drifted over familiar territory, he witness confused soldiers scurrying, others on the ground, the difference between the true Horde-born and the recruited and raised troops from the native territories made very clear.    
  
He pulled into a hanger, disembarked and strode with purpose through the halls of the Fright Zone’s center, headed for the sanctum.  He wrinkled his nose-area up at armored bodies littering the halls.  So many lost already – likely at least half of his army gone within an hour’s time – such a waste!    
  
There was a traffic jam of humanoid wreckage in the hallways leading to the infirmary – people having jammed themselves inside, desperately seeking resources in the disaster.  Some of the people looked like they had climbed over one another – some had their hands clawed out as if fighting one another to be first in line.    
  
As he made his haste, Hordak almost stepped right on the back of a young man splayed outside of one of the barracks – a scrawny blond boy.  He recalled that one; one of the weaker raised-from-infancy units, poor at most combat applications, but a skilled sniper, and Entrapta’s prized research assistant.  He’d been the unlikely hero of the Horde’s last battle.  His eyes were wide and blank.  A pitiable loss, given his recently proven usefulness.  Hordak moved on.    
  
He paused, however, when he came across two of his Force Captains just outside the door to his sanctum.  An oxygen canister lay next to them, its gauge reading as depleted. There was some evidence by its position and that of the mask attached to it that they had tried to share it.  As it was, there was a ball formed of two entwined bodies blocking his path.  Scorpia was doubled over Catra, shielding her in a protective hug.  For her part, Catra was curled firmly into Scorpia’s middle, as if seeking comfort. Their eyes were firmly closed as if trying to wince away their mutual ending.    
  
Hordak stepped past them, into the sanctum.    
  
Imp scurried past him, pausing and pointing.  Emily was shuffling about in a frenzy and nudging something on the floor.    
  
“Entrapta?” Hordak called cautiously.    
  
The scientist was on her knees, breathing from a mask attached to an oxygen tank.  She was trying to pull herself up to the portal guidance console.  She shook and she fell.    
  
The air tank was in the red zone.    
  
“Entrapta,” Hordak said, bending down to lift her up in his arms.    
  
Emily beeped up at him, looking as worried as a something without a face could look.  He did not like how Entrapta’s hair just dripped over his left arm.  It was completely limp – not so much as a curl or twitch.  As the mask from the emptied tank fell off her face, she hiccupped and choked.    
  
“Be strong,” Hordak intoned.  “It seems our project has met with… some degree of failure.  Hold on.  I believe I can fix you.”    
  
Entrapta managed, with some apparent labor, to move one tendril of hair, which she raised upwards in a motion like a pointing finger.  “Remember…what I told you…” she sounded dazed.  Panic rose within Hordak, an unfamiliar feeling.  She whispered out, “You…you can learn a lot…a lot from failure.”    
  
Her hair fell limp once again and her head rolled to the side as her eyelids fell.  She issued one last little squeak of breath as Hordak gently shook her.    
  
“Entrapta, stay with me.  We got the portal open.  We did it.”    
  
Emily was pacing, frantic.    
  
Hordak grunted and whisked his cargo over to his operating station.  The machines that maintained him sparked to life as he entered the chamber.  He pulled a few switches to gain access to specific surgical arms as a table rose up from the center.  He laid Entrapta upon the table and winced at what he was about to do.  This was not going to be pretty.    
  
Various needles and drills plunged themselves into her form at once.    
  
“Cardiac massage,” Hordak barked into the maintenance mainframe.  “Neuro-stimulation.”    
  
He went to a workbench to retrieve various surgical tools.  He was not a surgeon, but had some knowledge gleaned from the upkeep of his own equipment.  He had, over the years, learned to manage his own rebreathers.  There was a chance, however slim, that he could save her.  As long as he could keep the last bit of life in her from going out, he could fit her with one of the cybernetic enhancements he had previously been trying to convince her to take.    
  
They could continue to work together, placing what was left of this world and many others under their heels, seeking new discoveries, and new horizons.    
  
As the stimulators got to work, Entrapta spasmed.    
  
Hordak snapped to attention.    
  
Her hair frizzed out at the bases of the ponytails.  Her eyes snapped open.  Her jaw clenched.    
  
Then she fell back onto the table, limp and lifeless, her eyes in a blank red gaze.    
  
Hordak roared and swept his arm across a workbench, scattering all of the surgical tools he’d been about to use to the floor.  He flipped a switch, pulling back the cybernetics installation equipment.  There was very little blood.    
  
The old tyrant sighed as he closed his lab partner’s eyes.  He once again picked her up in his arms.    
  
“Yes,” he said slowly.  “I do believe I have learned a lot from this failure.  More than I wanted to know.”    
  
“Pick it up,” he spat at Emily, who did as ordered, grabbing a specific tool.    
  
The robot followed him as he wandered down to an area of the Fright Zone he rarely visited.  He motioned for one of Entrapta’s other inventions to follow him, a recently-built multi-tool robot that had a very large shovel-attachment.  Hordak remembered the story she had told him about this one being subject to “an existential crisis” at one point.      
  
He reached an area that was not covered in metal, paving or scrap.  It was barren land, but land nonetheless.  He set his gaze toward the large multi-tool robot.  “Dig,” he ordered.    
  
Hordak shifted Entrapta in his arms to try to keep her from rigoring up.  Her hair draped to his feet.  It was behaving like anyone else’s hair now, and this was unnatural.    
  
Hordak knew this to be one Etherian custom for dealing with the dead.  The Fright Zone tended to scavenge useful tissues for study, leaving the rest of a soldier’s remains to the incinerators.  He had no idea what people did in Dryl.  This somehow felt appropriate.  When he determined that the grave was deep enough, he laid Entrapta in it with the utmost care.  He smoothed her hair out by her sides and took the tool that Emily carried:  The hex-driver that had started it all.  He closed Entrapta’s hands over it on her chest.  He ordered the digging-machine to “Cover,” and turned to walk away.    
  
Emily beeped at him and hunkered down at the head of the pit.    
  
“Do as you wish,” Hordak told her.    
  
So, Emily stayed beside the grave while Hordak left.    
  
He walked past loyal Horde-born soldiers as they cleaned up the dead among their comrades and asked him questions.  He dismissed them, claiming that he was headed to his throne room and did not wish to be disturbed.  They were to carry on with their work until they received further orders.    
  
He felt strangely small within his throne room and it felt strangely colder than normal.  It was empty.  He was alone.  Not even Imp was there.  The little creature was probably trying to make sense of the mass death and disappearance around his home.  He would come back with reports later.  It did not matter now.    
  
Hordak sat down and rested his chin in one hand, shoulders slumped.    
  
If his message got through properly, the Horde high command would be here soon.    
  
The room was a cavern and utterly silent.    
  
Conquest and failure. Victory and loss.  All within the space of a day.  He wasn’t sure that he’d learned anything from it.    
  
Well, the planet was his now.    
  
  
______________________________  
  
**END.**


End file.
